Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location - <AUTHOR> http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-victim-who-died-in-tesla-crash-had-complained-about-auto-pilot/3275600/ <comment><USER2> "Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015. ... There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road."

Who wrote this statement does not understand software. If there is some kind of Heisenbug, those numbers are too small to prove that the software is ok, and actually the guy that died reporting that there was an issue there, and later crashing there, looks like a very interesting hint about a potential software bug that should be investigated. The Tesla statement is the equivalent of "works in my laptop" at a bigger scale. Also consider that 85k times since 2015 means that potentially only a fraction of those trips were executed with the latest version of the software. Moreover the street layout may now be kinda different triggering some new condition.

<comment><USER3> Heisenbugs in AI are also interesting. As computers approach sentience, it will become progressively harder to explain their behavior.

Why did you eat a bagel instead of eggs this morning? Usually there isn't a scientific answer.

In the present, AI models are already so complicated that it seems hard to get reproducible diagnostic results, short of just saving every frame of data that the car's sensors pick up. And for video that seems rather prohibitive. Imagine collecting all sensor data for each of those 200 trips per day along the entire stretch of road.

<comment><USER4> Aren't many AI methods also inherently probabilistic? That would make it by definition impossible to definitively explain any particular behavior.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by probabilistic? If you mean that the models takes input and outputs one or more labeled probabilities (e.g. "90% confidence the input photo is a dog, 10% confidence the input photo is a cat), then yes, I believe that many AI systems work this way. If you mean _random_ , in the sense that the system may return different results given the exact same inputs, then in not sure if there are AI systems that work that way.

<comment><USER6> There are. Monte Carlo methods is the keyword you're looking for. AlphaGo (Monte Carlo Tree Search) is an example of one such AI.

Obviously you can set the RNG seed to be the same every time too, but even that only works if your system is wholly synchronous, which a car probably isn't.

Note that I doubt Monte Carlo methods are common in the autonomous vehicle space.

<comment><USER7> I'd expect Monte Carlo methods to be used in a number of cases that have deterministic time envelopes for evaluation. Randomized selection and evaluation can be incredibly effective. They also resist degenerate structured input vulnerabilities.

I'm not in the automotive space, but I'd be surprised if there were a viable self-driving car team _not_ using Monte Carlo methods somewhere in the vehicle stack.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this was unfortunately worded. There are subproblems for which MC/randomized methods fit well, but in general those circumstances are well understood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the things you learn in flying is not to force it. If conditions are not safe. Just forget about it. It almost seems the same type of judgement needs to be made for auto-pilot. If your auto-pilot acts up at all. Just turn it off and don't use it till it's resolved. All you need is one incident to be dead, so if you get a chance to observe any abnormalities, consider it a blessing.

Something that will also be great will be a sort of "crash dump/bug report" button for these cars. If at any time your car does something unsafe, you can hit that button. The car will save the last 60 seconds so the manufacturer can analyze it to debug and figure out what went wrong.

I was so excited about auto-pilot and dreamed of getting in my car and sleeping while it made cross-country trips. So much for that, that seems way far out.

<comment><USER9> > I was so excited about auto-pilot and dreamed of getting in my car and > sleeping while it made cross-country trips. So much for that, that seems way > far out.

This is more a hijack than a direct critique but I think the general issue is the assumption that we need a private vehicle for that.

Trains are perfectly capable for bringing me from A to B while I am sleeping for years now.

Edit:// with years I mean years. Before that pressure made longer rides usually more uncomfortable than they are now with modern trains. Probably only because my area has plenty of mountain tho.

<comment><USER10> In the US you will have lots of time to sleep due to waiting for an oncoming train to clear.

In most parts of the country we don't have dedicated passenger tracks. Amtrak (our passenger line) just rents track time on the freight lines. The problem is that freight lines are often single track lines so if there is oncoming freight you just wait until the freight clears. Sometimes this his hours.

Until we have dedicated passenger lines, long distance train travel is a non- starter here. It was too slow for my 75 year old uncle on a site seeing tour. His exact words were "fun, but never again"

<comment><USER11> I've ridden a lot of Amtrak and it's never been on a single track line. Are you sure that's an actual problem? Long delays, sure, but is that the reason? Seems to usually be train equipment failure.

<comment><USER12> Having ridden a lot of Amtrak almost makes it less likely that you'd have experienced the single track problem, since quality rail experiences in the US are pretty concentrated such that someone who has good train experiences probably lives/works in an area where that is the rule. On the East coast, pretty good service arguably extends as far south as Richmond, but past that sitting on the tracks is very common. And with that you get the classic downward spiral of crappy transit. Ride a train in SC or GA, and you'll see that anyone with the money for a plane ticket has abandoned rail there.

<comment><USER11> I mostly rode the train from SC to Boston and back (Southern Crescent) ... it's dual track all of the way. Also DC to Chicago, southern route, dual track all of the way.

<comment> james-mcelwain I _love_ Amtrak and am willing to put up with the delays, but DC to Chicago stop all the time, especially in the mountains, to wait for higher priority trains to pass. Sometimes it's only for a few minutes at a time, but sometimes it adds up to hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't believe this person kept using it. If I had noticed a bug in auto- pilot and complained about it, I would be way too scared to ever use auto- pilot again. Personally, I never use auto-pilot because driving is piss easy, as it's designed to be.

 _Perfect_ self-driving cars is a nearly impossible feat to accomplish in an unbounded track. I can only imagine automated driving in a system which has no room for error. Examples include: tunnels under the ground, chain links on the ground (as in trolleys, trains, etc.), or anything else that vastly reduces the entropy involved in driving.

With self-driving cars on current roads, it will probably take years to get from 1% error to .1% error, and decades to get from .1% error to .01% error, which isn't even good enough. Perhaps it will take a century or longer to develop the required artificial intelligence to make self-driving cars perfect "enough". There's just too much room for unique problems to spawn. Bounding vehicle freedom seems to be the only way forward.

<comment><USER14> Your numbers about error percentiles don't make sense. Ideally, you'd want an outcome measure like fatalities per million miles, accidents per 100k miles, not "% error" which is vague.

Furthermore, look at the actual data we have right now. SDC makers actually put out data in California about their "disengagement rate" which is how many time the human drivers took over from the software. Waymo have steadily increased that rate over the past few years, now they are driving many hours without disengagements. Look at the link below, page 4, you'll see they have 63 disengagements over 350k miles. That's 1 per 5.5k miles, so these cars are driving for days without a human takeover.

They will not need their own infrastructure, that would be not be economically viable. They will go on the roads we have or they won't go at all. Tunnels are going to be reserved for high-density point-to-point travel, if the boring company or others ever get scale...

<comment><USER13> Then let's add some perspective. You must be referring this[0] paper. If the average person puts on 1,000 miles per month[1], then that means they'd have to deal with disengagement (a mishap) at least twice a year, which is not acceptable for fully autonomous driving. I'm going to define a "fully autonomous vehicle" as "a vehicle which should not _ever_ require me to sit in the front seat and control it under any conceivable circumstance".

Put differently, I should be able to lay down for a nap in the back seat and wake up at my destination without any chance for disengagement during my entire lifetime. At the current rate of 1 mishap per 5,500miles, I would be dead after about 6 months.

Assuming a human lives to 75 years (we should really be using 75years minus 16years, but it's unimportant), a lifetime of driving is about 1,000mi/mo x 12mo/yr x 75yr = 900,000 miles. I don't even want the probability of encountering a mishap to be once per _lifetime_ , let alone once per 6 months. One mishap per 900,000 miles isn't enough, because, on average, I'd encounter one disengagement in my lifetime. Assuming we're striving for a world where 7 billion people can drive without a single incident in 75 years (a vast underestimate), we need the probability of a mishap to occur to be less than once per 7,000,000,000humans x 900,000mi/human = 63 x 10^14 miles.

1/5e3 is not even _close_ to 1/6e15. We're talking about 12 orders of magnitude in our error rate. I'd say we're laughably far away from our goal. We've got a _long_ way to go.

[0] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115-a72a-97f6f24b23cc/Waymofull.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

[1] [https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/25/the- averag...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/25/the-average- american-drives-this-much-each-year-ho.aspx)

<comment><USER15> > I don't even want the probability of encountering a mishap to be once per > lifetime,

This doesn't seem reasonable - Waymo's report doesn't dive in depth enough about each disengagement to warrant this sort of extreme reliability.

If "2 disengagements" per year, were at most fenderbenders - something I'd wager humans do way more than twice per year - that would be a very different story than if those 2 disengagements were life threatening. Sure you'd wake up from your nap, but you wouldn't be dead, and at most you'd have to exchange insurance information.

<comment><USER13> > This report covers disengagements following the California DMV definition, > which means "a deactivation of the autonomous mode when a failure of the > autonomous technology is detected or when the safe operation of the vehicle > requires that the autonomous vehicle test driver disengage the autonomous > mode and take immediate manual control of the vehicle."

So, you're right, there's no clear distinction, but I would further argue that it doesn't matter. Even if only 1/1000 disengagements are fatal, my conclusion remains the same. I think we're splitting hairs at this point, though.

Even if not fatal, I highly doubt a significant fraction of such events (as defined above) would allow me take a nap upon departure and wake up at my destination, so it would still be unacceptable to me. I guess we have to agree on what an acceptable end-game is for fully autonomous vehicles. If you think "waking up on the shoulder exchanging insurance" is acceptable, then that would indeed change the numbers (but by how much? Two, maybe four orders of magnitude?).

Humans get into fender-benders all the time, but surely we'd strive to eradicate this inefficiency in the automated driver. I think this is still an active area of debate; some assembly-line work can be made more efficient with machines, but we've seen humans out-perform machines in other types of work. I think driving tends to utilize more reactive, intuitive "System 1" thinking[0], so I imagine that humans will be vastly better than machines at driving for a very long time.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The path into the barrier looks a lot like a lane.

[https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x](https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x)

And the old striping is lightly visible as well.

<comment><USER17> looks like that would trick a human driver under certain lighting conditions. between Seattle and Bellevue a stretch of freeway looks just like that and trips me over every time

<comment><USER18> Either the same place or a nearby one (same pair of highways) did trick a human driver two years ago: [https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/HAR1701.pdf)

"[...] when it entered and traveled in an unmarked gore area, rather than the intended high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lane, and collided with a crash attenuator. The 990-foot-long gore, with an unmarked inside area, separates the left exit HOV lane for State Route 85 from the US-101 HOV lane."

<comment><USER19> Not the same place nor nearby. From the picture on page 24 it's clear that this is the 85/101 interchange in south San Jose, about 20 miles away from the other 85/101 junction where the Tesla accident happened.

The type of accident does seems comparable though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If he had seen this issue multiple times before why would he keep using autopilot in that area? That seems like a very odd decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but let's not blame the victim.

<comment><USER21> I'd definitely blame an airline pilot who crashed because he relied on autopilot in a situation he knew was not handled well by the autopilot. (I would _also_ blame the autopilot.) I don't see why the driver of a car with any kind of semi-automated system should be held to a lesser standard.

It sucks that the driver died, and it sucks that the Tesla autopilot system had problems handing that kind of situation, but that does not mean the driver is blameless. He put himself and the people in the cars around him at risk by using the autopilot feature on a stretch of road where he knew it did not work well.

<comment><USER22> > I don't see why the driver of a car with any kind of semi-automated system > should be held to a lesser standard.

Because the driver didn't receive any training from the manufacturer. Airplane pilots, in contrast, receive a ton of training right down to how to fly a specific type of aircraft(single-engine, twin-engine, instrument flying, etc.). Additionally the manufacturer will provide training to pilots on how to operate any nifty features of the commercial aircraft.

I don't believe Tesla provides any training whatsoever on how to use these features. And I'm not aware of any mechanisms preventing untrained users from activating these features. A tutorial that you can click through does not count because you do not ensure rapport with the trainee like you would in a person-to-person training.

Back when cars were being commoditized the dealer would often provide training to new drivers. And in all states new drivers are required to take a practical test to demonstrate that they are competent to drive. Does Tesla require their users to prove any sort of understanding or competence before they unlock Autopilot?

You might argue that requiring training sets a dangerous precedent, but users need to be made aware that the driver assistance systems are not foolproof, and the only foolproof way to do that is to require them to attend a training.

<comment><USER23> Exactly.

Tesla is beyond irresponsible with this and IMO they should be sued out of existence.

It isn't a new feature on a cell phone that you just watch a youtube video on and move on with your day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/apples-steve-wozniak- doesnt-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/apples-steve-wozniak-doesnt- believe-anything-elon-musk-or-tesla-say.html)

"Man you have got to be ready — it makes mistakes, it loses track of the lane lines. You have to be on your toes all the time," says Wozniak. "All Tesla did is say, 'It is beta so we are not responsible. It doesn't necessarily work, so you have to be in control.'

"Well you that is kinda a cheap way out of it."

<comment> cup-of-tea Unlike people like Elon and Jobs, you can safely calibrate your bullshit meter with Woz. He's not as famous because the press don't generally like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love Tesla to death and in most cases will defend them beyond the point of reason.

But I took a test drive in a model S for the first time earlier this year and almost immediately noticed autopilot's extremely unreliable behavior— it would swerve out of lanes in ordinary situations that should have been easy to handle. The _second_ I saw that, hat was it: I would never use it again before many years of testing and improvement had taken place. No way am I gambling my life on a clearly incomplete feature just because it's cool. Fuck that.

Of course Tesla is fairly safe behind their disclaimers and warnings, and to be honest I think it may be impossible to develop such a system without putting it into the wild before it's perfect.

But for me, personally...I'll let other people choose to be the Guinea pigs. The risks are all too obvious. Continuing to use the feature is very dangerous. Do it knowing this may very well happen to you.

<comment><USER26> I have a 2015 Tesla model S and I have never seen the behaviour you describe. I use autostart a lot on the ground that it's good to have two of us paying attention.

<comment><USER27> They dropped the system used in their older cars because their supplier for it decided they were too reckless and refused to do business with them anymore. Happened around 2016, I think. Since then they've been using an in-house system that doesn't work so well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of the issue with the already- collapsed crash barrier and what CalTrans says about it. That sort of thing is there for a reason, and to be left in a crushed state for any period of time is bad.

<comment><USER29> In Texas, I've seen crushed barriers remain collapsed for weeks on end. Either that or they are just hit again right after being replaced. Which tells me, it's a poorly designed road and causes confusion for drivers. Which in fact may be what this Tesla crash turns out to be.

<comment><USER30> Exactly, I drive past this barrier every day...the problem is the left two lanes on 101 are carpool/EV lane so Tesla drivers just zoom down it...at this particular exit, the left carpool lane leads to an HOV flyover exit which puts you on 85. If you are not paying attention (ie on autopilot flying past traffic), you will end up on a completely different highway! I see people very frequently swerve out of the flyover lane back on to 101 very often, so my initial thought was that he tried to disengage too late to either get back on 101 or the catch the flyover (not clear which one).

<comment><USER31> He lived in Foster City and was working at Apple, so it's likely he wanted to take the 85 ramp to Cupertino.

I've seen something that said that the car was warning him to take control, but he hadn't done so. Texting, maybe?

<comment><USER32> Before this rumour spreads: the latest Tesla statement [1] is worded in a deliberately misleading fashion and the only thing we can tell from it is that his hands were _according to the software_ not on the wheel for 6s before the impact.

>The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver's hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision

Note the _and_.

[1] [https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last- week's-accident](https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week's-accident)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One thing to remember in all the discussions about the accident is, that there is no information available whether the autopilot was active at the time of the accident.

<comment><USER34> Tesla has just announced that autopilot was on during the crash. [https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last- week's-accident](https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week's-accident)

It sounds like they are saying the driver had 5 seconds to notice the problem and react. It is scary to think that when you are on autopilot you may be 5 seconds away from death at any time. Better not take those eyes off the road!

<comment><USER35> If you take the human factor away 5 seconds ahead of time warning is quite a lot. The car could have slowed down to a possibly non fatal speed. By asking the human to act the autopilot is actually throwing away at least 2 of those precious 5 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> SW/HW Bugs happen - fact of life. More concerning is that Tesla denying this was ever reported to them...

I had my driver side view mirror stuck issue fixed and they put in the notes that they re-filled all my tires during repair service allegedly as reqd. by some CA law. Later that week I got an alert that my tire pressure was low and had to get it air pumped so obviously they didn't do that despite having claimed to have done just that...

<comment><USER36> > More concerning is that Tesla denying this was ever reported to them.

This is how Tesla reacts to all bad publicity. Bad review on battery life comes out? Data dump indicating the reviewer might've done something wrong. Accident? Statistical dump showing that most cars don't do this. I like this technique more than generic "we can't comment" responses, but I'm pretty confident they heavily cherry pick, looking for something that people who glom onto data can see and say "oh good, Tesla's right."

<comment><USER37> Yup Tesla knows their audience - it's their semi-rabid owner and aspiring owner fan base. Throw out some logs or stats without context and let them do the dirty work for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _Walter took it into dealership addressing the issue, but they couldn 't duplicate it there_

Why not get a mechanic to ride along with him to that location, perhaps with extra diagnostic equipment connected? I could see how a bug that is dependent upon being at that location would certainly not be reproducible somewhere else.

Here's an automotive service booklet from almost 70 years ago which recommends the same thing for troubleshooting:

[http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Master/021/Page14.htm](http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Master/021/Page14.htm)

</comment><comment><USER39> _before the crash, Walter complained "7-10 times the car would swivel toward that same exact barrier during auto-pilot_

...and after 7 to 10 times , he still didn't learn his lesson? That's pretty stupid if you ask me. If my car does something weird at a particular stretch of road, especially 7 to 10 times, you can bet your bananas that i'll be paying a lot of attention on that stretch of road. If my "autopilot" (seriously, Tesla should stop using that name) isn't reliable in certain circumstances or places, then - guess what? - I WONT BE USING IT THERE. Why blame Tesla (I'm no Tesla fan), when the operator of the vehicle refused to operate it properly in the face of prior experience? Poor guy, and I feel for his family, but come on, what a dumbass

</comment><comment><USER40> Previous discussion of this crash: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16694365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16694365)

</comment><comment><USER41> I really don't like autopilot. It's good enough to make drivers trust it and not pay attention, but it's not good enough to not kill people when they do that. And when there's an accident Telsa come out and say "the system warned the driver to put their hands on the wheel" or something similar. Unless a car can 100% self drive drivers aids should require the driver to have hands on the wheel and be paying active attention at all times.

<comment><USER42> This is part of why I haven't considered a Tesla. If I get into an collision in any other manufacturer's vehicle, the manufacturer's PR team won't impune my honor in the court of public opinion.

It seems like the Tesla autopilot is very similar in capabilities to other manufacturers' active lane keeping, adaptive cruise control and active collision avoidance braking systems, however the marketing and user behavior is much different.

There's no expectation that a Pacifica with all the bells and whistles is going to do a good job driving for you with no hands, but if somebody stops suddenly, it will too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Highway driving is supposed to be "easiest" problem for self driving cars to solve, since there are fewer edge cases, less turning, etc., but it's also the most dangerous type of driving. You are much more likely to die going at 65mph than 25mph.

I think deploying self driving cars at <=25mph speeds at first would be wise. Personally, I wouldn't risk letting a car take over at high speeds until there is a longer track record of safety.

<comment><USER44> Many places with <=25mph speeds have pedestrians, and they're a lot more delicate than vehicles are. Drivers aren't the only ones at risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The fact that it happened to him "several times" and not to others to me might indicate a specific hardware/sensor issue related to his vehicle. A sensor, slightly misaligned or not working to the same tolerance? Pure speculation, I know. Also the 200 trips/day refers to what? All Tesla vehicles? How about for his specific year & model and software version and configuration (both equipped and driver-defined)?

</comment><comment><USER46> He complained 7 - 10 times and then just forgot about how it used to swerve towards a head on collision with the median?

</comment><comment><USER47> Do you "feel" any responsibility as an autopilot ML engineer? I know a few that joined within the last year.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there a specific system for traffic sign detection? I'd have thought you could have a system that is dedicated to spotting traffic signs in the current country with a significantly higher accuracy than cat detection.

Even a small part of a sign should be enough. They're designed to be easy to spot.

It seems like we just set neural networks up to recognise all objects and assume they'll recognise simple objects too. However typically how humans learn is through simple cartoons first and then layer on top of that rather than the other way round.

Edit: should have done some googling before opening my mouth [0] [1]

[0]: [https://amundtveit.com/2017/07/13/traffic-sign-detection- wit...](https://amundtveit.com/2017/07/13/traffic-sign-detection-with- convolutional-neural-networks/)

[1]: [http://www.bartlab.org/Dr.%20Jackrit's%20Papers/ney/1.TRAFFI...](http://www.bartlab.org/Dr.%20Jackrit's%20Papers/ney/1.TRAFFIC_SIGN_Lorsakul_ISR.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER49> Certainly CalTrans is responsible for not replacing the barrier. Expect a lawsuit/settlement. Tesla will be found liable too, that'll be a jury trial civil suit. Why? Despite reporting that AP failed at that interchange and despite still using it, drivers and juries expect safety features to work as advertised.

<comment><USER50> The autopilot is not a safety feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I am pretty mystified why tesla is even running autopilot on their cars. They already have more demand than they can handle, and I don't think anyone buys a tesla because of the autopilot. They are opening themselves up to huge court claims at the same time they are low on money. Just keep running tests and maybe do a pilot for a few years. Isn't Waymo sort of in the lead right now? They aren't running their software on millions of vehicles but seem to be progressing okay.

It seems all these companies are in a big rush and being slapdash. Maybe it's a disconnect between the engineers and the execs/shareholders. It doesn't even seem profit-driven...almost fear driven. ("we don't wanna be left behind.")

<comment><USER52> It allows them to develop self driving technology without the expense of dedicated cars and paid drivers, and without any liability (because drivers take the risk).

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The question is, if the driver was aware the autopilot was unsafe at that area, why did they keep using autopilot there?

You can't just throw your hands on the air and hope for the best. Your car, you are on the wheel, you are responsible.

</comment><comment><USER54> Am I the only one that thinks that drivers with auto-pilot and back-up drivers for driver-less cars should be ready to drive at any instant? As an engineer, I'm seeing these features as beta at best.

<comment><USER55> The problem is that that's not how human cognition works. If the auto-pilot is working well your brain will inevitably become accustom to the lack of stimulus. Ironically I think that these systems have a kind of uncanny valley type area where they are probably safest when the auto-pilot is poor or great, but not in the middle.

<comment><USER54> I understand that ... and that's another problem we've yet to solve. What you've described is what led to the crash of the Korean Airliner that undershot the runway at SFO a few years ago. In that case, they would have been better off letting the plane land itself but that's not SOP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Side story, I have an open with crash warning.

On a highway I think it even detects crashes ahead of you ( had once two cars in a three lane almost crashing while one car tried to switch Lanes)

Well, back to story. I have a street where cars park left and right of the street like a zick Zack. There is one spot where it always warns me about a crash..

</comment><comment><USER57> IMHO, they need to get autopilot at least an order of magnitude better than human drivers statistically, before releasing this tech, because this sort of news is extremely bad public-perception-wise. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a Tesla driver to always have his hands on the wheel during autopilot

</comment><comment><USER58> Why call something "auto-pilot" when it is clearly not remotely ready to do what its name implies ?

<comment><USER59> Unless someone has ever used an auto pilot in something like a Cessna, that person would probably have a wildly overoptimistic idea of what an autopilot does. Even on a passenger jet it's really not that smart, there's just lots more volume to explore so it's hard to kill everyone.

A better analogy would be cruise control. It controls essentially one variable. As does lane keeping. You combine a couple of these things and you think it's smart, and it isn't. We learnt this (edge cases between single variable trackers) ~40 years ago in aircraft, that there are places in the flight envelope that combinations of single variable trackers will still let you go, but will also kill you.

<comment><USER60> There used to be the same problems with cruise control, though. People thought it would brake automatically and steer around corners, and would get into accidents that proved their assumption wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Why no one talks about other victims of car accidents and their is about 6k per month on average in US alone. But Uber and Tesla are on headlines when someone dies and there is like what 3-4 victims in total after all those years? It is not even worth mentioning.

<comment><USER62> Miles driven, genius. There are millions of other vehicles on the road and not that many teslas

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Am I the only one that finds it odd that a human also ran into the same barrier within 24 hours of the crash? Perhaps Caltrans is partially to blame.

(Full disclosure: Their incompetence almost killed me a few times back in my I-880 commuting days)

<comment><USER64> > Am I the only one that finds it odd that a human also ran into the same > barrier within 24 hours of the crash?

Source? ABC7 says the previous crash was 11 days ago (DUI...), the barrier just wasn't fixed immediately.

[http://abc7news.com/automotive/exclusive-i-team- investigates...](http://abc7news.com/automotive/exclusive-i-team-investigates- why-caltrans-didnt-fix-safety-barrier-before-tesla-driver-died-there/3280399/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> They should rename autopilot to auto-scapegoat.

There is zero information yet and its all everyone is jumping onto. Last week the same thing happened to a Tesla that wasn't even equipped with autopilot.

</comment><comment><USER66> "Autopilots performance is unrelated to navigation"

Tesla is mincing words.

</comment><comment><USER67> My opinion: EVs, self-driving or directed, need an ejection mechanism for their batteries. Petrol has the advantage that it _may_ ignite, where batteries are almost guaranteed to when damaged. Ideally, it would be an active system (launching the batteries no more than a meter away) - but that could fail under the conditions which caused the damage to the batteries. An alternative would be a passive system made of materials known to melt when exposed to a lithium fire - providing a few centimeters of separation from the cabin. Either way, the current situation is not ideal.

<comment><USER60> So your system would throw a burning pile of lithium into the woods to start a forest fire, into oncoming traffic to cause another crash, into a pedestrian on the sidewalk, etc?

<comment><USER67> You're right. It's a terrible idea. Pity it's too late to edit or delete that dumb comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Tesla is very very very bad with PR when something goes wrong. Their response to this is awful.

</comment><comment><USER69> It looks like Status: WORKSFORME won't cut it in this brave new world.

</comment><comment><USER70> Crash victim? More like crash dummy, auto-pilot is raw.

</comment><comment><USER71> Seems pretty inexcusable for a self-driving system to ever hit a static obstacle (while not trying to avoid another collision).

There should be manslaughter charges for this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's interesting nobody is asking why the crash attenuator was not replaced faster.

</comment><comment><USER73> The fire seems pretty severe too. I wonder what caused the battery containment to fail?

</comment><comment><USER74> blame the customer, blame the govt, but your software is perfect Tesla?!

</comment><comment><USER75> Super fun to compare the comments on this to the comments on the Uber accident.</comment>


Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, Now Available for Pre-order - <AUTHOR> http://benlakey.com/2012/08/02/steve-jobs-the-lost-interview-now-available-for-pre-order/

<comment><USER2> If I remember correctly, it was discovered in some exec's garage. I am just glad that the tape actually made it to the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really hate the fact that you still can't buy it on iTunes...</comment>


Apple Keeps Constant Log of iPhone Calls in iCloud, Warns Cop Contractor - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/11/17/iphone-call-logs-in-icloud-warns-elcomsoft-hackers/#7f66682a2936 <comment><USER2> There are currently 3 articles (including this one) on the same topic on the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12977904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12977904)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12977612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12977612)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://theintercept.com/2016/11/17/iphones-secretly-send- ca...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/17/iphones-secretly-send-call-history- to-apple-security-firm-says/)

      It's not just regular call logs that get sent to Apple's
      servers. FaceTime, which is used to make audio and video calls
      on iOS devices, also syncs call history to iCloud
      automatically, according to Elcomsoft. The company believes
      syncing of both regular calls and FaceTime call logs goes back
      to at least iOS 8.2, which Apple released in March 2015.

      ...

      Generally, if someone were to attempt to download data in an
      iCloud account, the system would email a notification to the
      account owner. But Katalov said no notification occurs when
      someone downloads synced call logs from iCloud.

      Apple acknowledged that the call logs are being synced and said
      it's intentional.

</comment><comment><USER4> Note to media companies (and everyone else) talking about security: _You have to put security elements in context to say anything reasonable_

That means both: 1) Consider your audience, and 2) Do a 'risk analysis' (Meaning figure out where the security issue starts to outweigh the convenience and describe the actual impact of the issue.)

This article (and the Intercept's) are both severely damaged by a failure to do either. Without stating the contexts where this call logging is a problem, and who it is likely to affect you end up writing alarmist nonsense- _especially_ when the audience is the general public.

</comment><comment><USER5> How is that shocking news?

I've setup my iPhone 7 from scratch without backup and curiously found my call log after logging into iCloud again. I was surprised but didn't think too much about it (my privacy threshold is perfectly fine with meta data being privately stored 'in the cloud') and it's not exactly hidden.

</comment><comment><USER6> > _there is no way to turn that syncing off, apart from just disabling iCloud > Drive completely_

Oh, well, glad _that_ was the first thing I did when I got an iPhone :p

<comment><USER7> Your smartphone isn't connected to a cloud service?!

<comment><USER8> How is it that surprising that they don't use iCloud drive on their phone?

<comment><USER7> I'm wondering if they used an alternative or none at all. My smartphone would be much less useful without a cloud service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So much for Apple being the security-conscious choice

<comment><USER10> But if Microsoft does this Everyone loses their minds.</comment></comment>


Show HN: We built the Common App for jobs (apply to 40 at once) - <AUTHOR> http://www.careerblitz.io <comment><USER2> Yes, I agree with the need to filter by city. I signed up with my phone and I cannot update my profile. I hope my cart will be available when I try this from a computer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wanted to browse the types of job listings available before signing up and releasing any private details, but the demo job search does not appear to allow search by region or city. I'm in the Bay Area and got suggestions from all over the US. You ought to allow granular search if you hope to drive membership.

</comment><comment><USER4> When applying and asking me for more details from each company, it would be great if I could remove certain jobs from the application. ie after I see that company wants me to write 4 paragraphs of info and I no longer want to apply at that moment, I could remove them from my application.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My friends and I spent the last few months building this. You make a profile with your name, email, and resume, and then all the jobs you apply to have this info pre-filled.

We've got about 5,000 jobs on there now, mostly with tech companies in NY and SF.

Would love some feedback!</comment>


Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf <comment><USER2> > Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 > months, name one that.. allowed you to make a better decision about a > serious matter affecting your life, your career, your business – compared to > what you would have known if you hadn't swallowed that morsel of news.

That's what got me to stop keeping up to date with most news a few years ago and I've been happier for it.

Being more charitable on why news is important though, news serves as modern day gossip, and gossip may play a key role in holding human societies together.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne9ae8/gossip-may-have- pl...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne9ae8/gossip-may-have-played-a- role-in-human-survival)

<comment><USER3> A lot of news stories in the past year have given me definitive direction in terms of how to spend my time politically. How to vote, which meetings to go to (redistricting, canvassing, etc.) More generally, I think they've all contributed to my mental models of the world.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't consider those to be matters affecting your life, career or business. They're really just interacting the news, like a hobby. Without the news, you wouldn't be interested in those things, and as a bonus, you wouldn't have the common (ie fairly useless) yet distorted mental models of the world that it gives people.

I have a more concrete example. Around the year 2000 I finished a computer science degree and was doing postgraduate in another subject. But it was getting boring and I decided to quit. My professor asked what I'd do next. I told him the plan I'd had all along - fall back on my CS degree and get a job as a programmer. What I didn't know, because I didn't read the news, was that the dot com crash had just happened and you couldn't get a job as a programmer. So I didn't, and spent a year or two unemployed.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't your example show how disadvantaged you were because you didn't keep up with the news? It surely affected your livelihood.

I guess OP doesn't need the news to figure out political candidates' positions.. or does s/he, since most political websites are just lies and empty promises. Choosing between e.g. the pro-environment or pro-coal candidate will surely have an effect on our lives in 20 years' time. Or one who wants to deploy a police state and harass all non-whites, or all "hippie weed smoker" types, etc..

<comment><USER6> The fact that the news might be necessary to obtain such info strikes me as a bug not a feature. We shouldn't need media(tion) between would-be politicians and citizenry. Perhaps quaint and impractical now, but I wish we still lived in an era where politicians literally went from town to town and yelled their pitches directly to citizens in the town square.

<comment><USER4> I don't see the harm in just reading what politicians promise. My city recently had a local election. Each candidate got to write a paragraph about themselves. I read them all looking for a few key points that I felt were important, and came up with a shortlist. Then excluded a few because of less important things until I had enough candidates (6) to vote for. Pretty easy. No news required. I purposely tried to ignore their advertisements in the street that were uniformly saying "Vote for me because no reason but look at my face!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What stopped me from keeping up with the news was noticing it being off whenever I knew a lot about the topic in question.

Ranging from glaring errors to subtle phrasing that may be technically correct, but insinuates something else, to -what I can only presume- spark outrage and thus increase "engagement".

I can only assume similar discrepancies across every topic.

<comment><USER8> >"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

Michael Crichton - Why Speculate: [http://docdro.id/4wgVecr](http://docdro.id/4wgVecr)

<comment><USER7> Thanks. An excellent companion piece to the OP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's unreasonable for most to go entirely without news. A good compromise is to get your news edited and curated.

I highly value having subscribed to The Economist for a couple of decades now. I try to avoid real-time news and read The Economist once a week to get global news. The weekly tempo reduces the need for the publisher to rush out an opinion on something that recently happened.

I know The Economist has biases. I think I understand most of these biases and take them into account.

I wish there were similar options for local news.

<comment><USER10> It's one thing to read a piece and know the editor's biases so you can take them into account. It's another thing entirely when the biases lead to a story going unpublished. How do you account for selective reporting?

<comment><USER11> As somebody who plays a similar game with magazines (physical copies of New Yorker, Wired, Nautilus, and others), I don't think one can realistically account for it, regardless of how wide and diverse your news diet is. At some point enough is enough, and it's practically up to each of us to draw those lines for ourselves.

For example, it's not possible to get local news this way (unless you live in a HUGE city), because local news is selectively ignored by major publications. For special interest items (tech, travel, food, cultural things) one can add a more special interest source (like Wired, or random blogs) to your selection, but those kinds of sources are usually more difficult to get in physical, weekly or monthly form; newsletters and podcasts are a godsend here.

You can also overcome the blindspots by occasionally browsing less formal sources like Reddit and Hn, but even those can be more of a trap than it's worth ime, and provide their own very false senses of all-knowledge.

To put it another way, the blind spot shoots both ways. I can't enumerate all of the fascinating things I've learned reading those magazines that I would never have encountered any where else. I'm not sure if there's an optimal solution here, it might be to each their own. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there is a deep dilemma associated with the news today. On the one hand, it is hard to be informed when the news contains so many lies, much of what you learnt from it just isn't true. The very consumption of it is adjusting your mental state and making you anxious and less productive and those responses maybe to something that isn't even true. But on the other hand, it is impossible to be informed if you don't read the news.

I know I was a lot more productive when I didn't care about the news and didn't watch any TV shows. I don't think you are a functioning adult unless you know the major goings-on of the world. People talk about the news a lot and it's important for those interactions even if it is little more than gossip. I think swapping quite a lot of the consumption of the low-quality news with books and other hobbies is something we ought to all do and spend news consumption on the higher quality publications as a decent middle ground between cold turkey and continuous consumption of nonsense.

<comment><USER13> > it is impossible to be informed if you don't read the news

being informed is not as valuable when there's more content out than you could consume in several lifetimes

what's valuable is how to derive any value from it

just an opinion

<comment><USER12> I guess my argument is the value derived from the news is to fit in with everyone else. It gives you a common grounding of the worlds going on, it isn't going to enable you to solve science or technology problems but it will help enable relationships. Without it, you lose an important connection to those around you.

<comment><USER14> You could say the same thing about sports or Kim Kardashian, or you could just not care and focus on things that actually interest you. That seems like an even more mature choice (hence functional adult).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That was great, just sent the link to a few friends and my wife.

The article is over eight years old, but in modern times, timeless advice.

News addiction is a very real sickness. Just as I would prefer my friends to maintain privacy online, I would prefer my friends to not waste their energy and power by gorging on news. Like the article said, news is to the brain what sugar is to the body.

</comment><comment><USER16> I disagree that people aren't tuning out of news. I talk to people in real life that keep news at a distance. They don't want to engage, they know it's a black hole anxiety inducing clickbait. It seems a common topic of discussion is our parents who get get off cable news or being fed up with political twitter/Facebook and deciding to no longer use social media because of news.

There's a great article from NY Times about "The America That Isn't Polarized" people not sucked into the correct news, just doing their jobs ([https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/upsh...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/upshot/many- americans-not-polarized.amp.html))

<comment><USER17> Are the people interviewed in that article role models that we should all aspire to emulate? The takeaway seems to be that those with less education and more economic stress don't pay as much attention to politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A good little summary. Unfortunately, the author, Rolf Dobelli stole much of it verbatim from Taleb, something Taleb does not like:

[https://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm](https://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm)

<comment><USER19> In the spirit of the article itself, who cares?

He said Taleb was a friend, maybe he gave permission to copy? And even if not and he stole it, how is that relevant? It's a good long form article with a clear message that is all the more beneficial the more widely it is read.

<comment><USER20> Taleb cares most directly, so that matters.

I also think that plagiarism is a detriment for society as it presents knowledge grounded on a lie. So it poisons knowledge's ability to help, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's frustrating how difficult it can be to escape the news, which is almost always some political outrage. Almost every remote server I log into has MSNBC set as the default homepage for the browser. Which means even while at work I'm treated to political outrage. It only takes a second to close but the exposure has already been done. And then there are all manner of public spaces that have some cable news channel babbling on. Same for restaurants. Can't even escape it at sports bars now that sports channels have become political operations. Hiking seems to be the best way to escape it.

<comment><USER22> OT: what's the context for remote servers having browsers configured to specific news sources? This strikes me as bizarre.

<comment><USER23> May mean the MSN homepage. IE, maybe Edge (dunno) could have those set as the default.

<comment><USER21> Yes, that's correct. For most Windows Server boxes, everything is designed to work in IE and it is guaranteed to exist on the box. MSN is Microsoft's choice as the default homepage for their browsers and MSN, or at least the page that is the default homepage, is typically stuffed with articles and photos chosen to solicit engagement, usually thorough provoking outrage. It has no place in a business environment. Boxes under my control, which aren't many, get duckduckgo set as the homepage.

<comment><USER14> I also didn't know why a remote server would have news on it. The worlds of Linux and Windows server administration are so far apart as to be unrecognizable to each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone suggest how to peruse news that is very specific to demographics? For example, my parents are green card holders and I'm a first generation immigrant. I'd like to know ASAP any news about government policy changes about immigration in my country.

Similarly, I'd like to know ASAP any news about government policy changes about the treatment of LGBTQIA+ people. Where would I go for that?

Really, I think the 'news diet' thing is for a specific demographic of people that aren't directly influenced by relatively subtle and potentially not- widely-disseminated news.

<comment><USER5> In Germany I've seen a forum for people trying to get their permanent residencies, someone would post a question and get expert answers, even quoting the relevant laws. I'd imagine there is a section there for "Stuff that's new"..

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I long for a dedicated curated positive and good news channel only. There are so many things happening in the world that help humanity and can be reported in a positive and healthy manner. Perhaps Alexa or google news can just read out snippets of "feel good" news only and skip all the sensational,policitcal or celebrity gossip.

The other main point is that there is no need for urgent breaking news likes it's shoved down 24x7 nowadays. Consume your news slowly in time, newspapers were great, you get a 24 hour period to collect thoughts and read well edited and concise news only that you can pick and choose over a Nice cup of tea !!! You don't need to know what's happening ASAP most of the time for all other local emergencies ,weather etc perhaps alerts from local news station apps or appropriate twitter feeds can help.

<comment><USER26> [https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> One thing that really demoralized me for reading news is I read some political books from the early 70s and realized that the themes, politics and controversies haven't changed since then. It's all the same stuff over and over again. Nothing ever get's resolved.

The author says the most important thing to happen in politics in the last 40 years is Watergate. You could even go without knowing what that was and do just fine.

<comment><USER28> Sure, because the kind of invasion of privacy and corrupt practices our intelligence agencies engage in today makes Watergate look like child's play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Political news can be amusing if you take it the right way. There is no practical need to follow political news until the last few weeks before an election.

Intermittent fasting from political and financial news is a good thing. Business news and sci/tech news are more positive and stimulating anyway.

<comment><USER30> You should participate politics, even with small effort, not just watch it. The biggest misunderstanding of democracy is that it's just voting. It's also organizing and discussion and lobbying/pressuring.

And following politics only during elections is also wrong advice. It's enough to follow issues weekly or monthly, not daily. Following politicians is less important than following the issues.

<comment><USER29> I think that representative democracy works, while direct democracy has very mixed track record. Generally the public should not be weighing in on issues.

The problem is that the public doesn't have the attention, interest or background to address more than a small number of issues. The issues that they do address are not necessarily important ones, but ones that the editorial boards of mass media think will attract eyeballs and sell ad space. The discussion is then led by special interest groups that are funded by interested parties. The result is a lot of heat among some narrow segment of the population but not much useful work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is absolutely the best advice I've come across in a long time. In this day and age where news are used predominantly to manipulate our political views by the major media, this piece is particularly relevant.

<comment><USER32> > this day and age...

The manufacturing of consent has been going on since the corporate monopolisation of newspapers in the early 20th century, but arguably news media has always had an agenda.

Before they were killed off I'm sure the labour class media organisations had an agenda that was pro-labour class.

You can never really escape agenda driven media you just have to be a knowledgeable, critical media consumer so you can derive information even from those with antagonistic agendas.

For example, Chomsky still thinks it's important to read The New York Times and check out CNN.

<comment><USER26> Even earlier than that. Check out this article about fake news in the days of George Washington: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/04/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/04/10/the- fake-news-that-haunted-george-washington/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you're worried about missing out on a topic, you can always set a series of Google Alerts for keyword terms to stay in the loop. You'll also get a wider variety of sources and opinions.

</comment><comment><USER34> Thoreau: "Read not the Times; read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth."

When important truths can be partial truths, then -- as with the posted article -- we can be bold in their statement.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm reminded of the concept of the "50-year Newspaper". A imagined newspaper only published every 50 years and only containing the most important stories of that span of time.

Almost everything in the news is here today gone tomorrow and as the article points out, what seems important nearly never is.

In the words of Rob Wiblin, news media today is a dumpster fire.

</comment><comment><USER31> His point No. 5, 11, 12 are particularly important to people trading financial markets. It's such a common occurrence that when bad news hit the wire, market goes up afterward. The investing proverb says, buy on rumor and sell on news. That's exactly what this guy is saying.

</comment><comment><USER35> There is good news tonight.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Heatter#%22There's_goo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Heatter#%22There's_good_news_tonight!%22)

"Heatter was already well known for trying to find uplifting but absolutely true stories to feed his commentaries. (He was especially known for a fondness for stories about heroic dogs.)"

</comment><comment><USER36> Try reading Congressional Research Service reports,they often provide quality/topical info.

</comment><comment><USER37> This reminds me of an article written by Aaron Swartz: [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

<comment><USER38> And yet now there is a link at the bottom telling us to follow the author on Twitter. That's like swearing off pot for heroin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Author's a known [1] plagiarist though

[1] [https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm](https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm)

</comment><comment><USER40> How selfish do you have to be not to be informed. You have to be a white rich industrialized man that is isolated from the rest of the world completely for his whole liglife

<comment><USER6> I dont understand anything about this comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Now replace the word news with social media and you get a new valid document.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm frankly conflicted. Ignoring news seems good for my mental health. But is it really the news? Or is it the reality? For example when you dig into the Trump administrations policies or behaviors it's usually MORE horrifying than imagined.

What if the house really is in fire and we all just want to be in denial about it by conveniently ignoring news? We'd rather work on the familiar: our own wealth and personal fulfillment than face the real problems out there?

I don't doubt the clickbait attention grabbing monstrosity is real, but what if the horrifying nature of the reality is more important for for us to know than our mental health? What if we need to focus on the crises society faces rather than our own personal needs?

</comment><comment><USER42> This is an arrogant privileged position to just ignore what is going on around you. This is at best ignoring the trampling of rights of the weakest of our society and at worst being an active colluder in such acts.

<comment><USER43> Is it really? 99.9% of the people who read the news do nothing to use that in any way to fight for the weakest in our society. For most, news is nothing but a list of topics for small talk. A few work towards using it to understand topics and make informed decisions. Even fewer actually act on anything they hear in the news directly.

<comment><USER42> > 99.9% of the people who read the news do nothing to use that in any way

Wouldn't that imply that we don't live in a democracy and ppl are picking boxes at random at the ballot box?

<comment><USER23> 1) I don't need to keep up with the news at all ~355 days/yr to be an adequately informed voter. It's not like it takes that long to google a candidate and some issues and catch up on what you missed.

2) If we're going the informed-voter justification, we'd be much (for large values of "much") better off if everyone took 99% of the time they spend on news and instead read foundational works and textbooks in political science, economics, comparative politics, ethics, statistics, history, and government in [home country], with maybe a smidge of modern policy pieces (e.g. think- tank stuff, policy studies, that kind of thing).

<comment><USER42> > keep up with the news at all ~355 days/yr

Is that what the article is discussing though?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Anyone Hiring Foreign Computer Engineers in Taiwan (or SE Asia)? - <AUTHOR> It's been a dream of mine to work in Taiwan for years now, and I have learning Mandarin for quite some time (but am not fluent).
Is it possible as a foreigner to get a job in Taiwan? Is it best to try and find multi-national companies with offices in Taiwan?
I've found that second method to be quite difficult so far as it seems large companies much prefer to hire local talent for roles that aren't "Senior Engineer" or similar.
I am comfortable with both hardware (embedded, cpu uarch, coherent interconnects, RTL + validation in verilog, etc) and software (embedded, OS/kernel impl, networking + web stack, bitcoin impl, and experienced with Java, Go, C, C++, Python, Perl, Javascript, several flavors of assembly, etc), but I am also willing and able to learn new things. <comment><USER2> Nothing helpful to say, but remember that there are official 'Who is Hiring?' / 'Who wants to be hired?' / 'Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?' posts at 11 AM Eastern time on the first weekday of every month.

Remember to look for them on Monday and read and post in the correct ones. You can see the last edition to get a general idea of the tone of the posts: [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)</comment>


A History of Political Correctness - <AUTHOR> http://www.phillymag.com/articles/penns-water-buffalo-incident-20-years/?all=1 <comment><USER2> It actually goes back to the early fights between socialists and communists.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#Early- to-...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#Early-to- mid_20th_century)

Religions change. It used to be about class; now it's about race. No sane person gives it a thought except when they are materially associated with the lunatics who get offended by racial thoughtcrimes.

<comment><USER3> What are "racial thoughtcrimes"? Maybe something like this? [http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html](http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html)

<comment><USER4> I believe what he is referring to is the fact that people self-censor their own thoughts, and fear the social repercussions if they don't.

For example, I studied econometrics, and one regression that is often run is regressing CRIME (a dummy variable for whether someone has committed a crime) on a number of right hand side variables, include BLACK, a dummy variable for being Black. Now it is a well known fact that no matter how many right hand side variables you include, the coefficient on BLACK will always be significant and positive. That is, even after accounting for income, education, etc., Black people commit more crime.

Now we are allowed to say this in class, because it is already understood that by getting this far into a PhD, you have proven yourself not to be an evil racist. For example, everyone _knows_ that the positive coefficient on BLACK must be a result of complex social interactions and not genetics.

But ordinary people aren't so sophisticated, so they are not allowed to even know that the coefficient on BLACK is significant. They would certainly be accused of racism for stating the true fact that Blacks commit more crime even after accounting for these other variables. And I assure you that none of us PhD's would come to their defense when they were accused of this. After all, that person might actually be a racist.

So thoughtcrime is thinking bad things about race, which can include true things if you're not in the inner circle of people who are allowed to discuss such matters openly.

<comment><USER5> > For example, I studied econometrics, and one regression that is often run is > regressing CRIME (a dummy variable for whether someone has committed a > crime) on a number of right hand side variables, include BLACK, a dummy > variable for being Black. Now it is a well known fact that no matter how > many right hand side variables you include, the coefficient on BLACK will > always be significant and positive. That is, even after accounting for > income, education, etc., Black people commit more crime.

You can't directly measure how much crime is committed by people of different races, so any purported measure of this uses some other proxy, most likely _convictions_ of crime.

Of course, relative rates of conviction for crime may not reflect relative rates of _commission_ of crime. Particularly, they may be distorted by biases in (among other things):

* Crime reporting,

* Prosecution,

* Courts and juries

<comment><USER4> That is an unimportant nitpick, precisely the kind of objection that people are taught to raise in the face of "racist" facts.

I assure you that the academics involved, all certified non-racists (and mostly non-economists if you don't trust them), are aware of this and either consider the bias to be small (in comparison with the effect being measured) or have corrected for it.

<comment><USER5> No, the fact that the supposed fact cannot actually be supported except by assuming the non-demonstrable non-existence (or irrelevance) of several other kinds of bias is not an "unimportant nitpick", as it means that the "fact" is nothing of the sort, but a conclusion based in non-falsifiable conjecture.

(Note that I haven't said anything about whether or not its "racist" \-- that's your deal -- I'm just saying that characterizing it as a fact is unjustifiable.)

<comment><USER6> _No, the fact that the supposed fact cannot actually be supported except by assuming the non-demonstrable non-existence (or irrelevance) of several other kinds of bias..._

Is this a parody of logic? Your point is not clear, regardless.

<comment><USER7> His point is crystal clear: he's saying you can't claim to rigorously study a relationship between race and crime by relying solely on conviction data, because racial prejudice and its legacy (for instance: what neighborhoods different races tend to live in, and whether those neighborhoods are enforcement priorities) has a profound impact on criminal conviction.

<comment><USER6> But I could also argue that not all crimes are caught in the data, because the law is written wrong. In fact, I could argue the _law_ as it is written is thus criminal. After all, this is a democracy and the people are responsible for the laws. The people are incapable of drafting the laws in a non discriminatory manner (because racial prejudice and its legacy). Or, I could argue the exact opposite. Both are equaly weak/strong. But, this style of debate is _incoherent_. For it to be coherent, it would require _special knowledge_. And is otherwise a variant of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's too bad that the term political correctness is so generically incorrect. Doing things like swapping out the N word for "african american," dropping the word "retard" from your vocabulary, referring to adult women as "women," and referring to people of non-european descent as more than "oriental" and "mexican" is not "being politically correct," it's doing something that takes you no effort that makes you less of an asshole.

<comment><USER9> The funny thing is, your own comment could make you look like an "asshole" in a few decades when moral fashions change again. That's part of the problem with political correctness. The other and much worse part is that in some situations the choice of words that you present as (as it indeed is) such a trivial matter can have very nontrivial consequences.

<comment><USER10> If we suppose the choice of words is a trivial matter then one wonders what a nontrivial choice of words would look like, if that is even possible.

The "choice of words" argument reminds me of a teenager, upon swearing at his mother, protesting that he is "just using a word". Of course he gets grounded anyway, and in time most people learn to outgrow that pseudological pedantry. In reality we use words that mean things and express ideas, and the ideas expressed in words like the N-word are generally odious and useless. And I would hesitate to assume that avoiding referring to an entire category of people with a swear word, associated with centuries of stereotypes and oppression, is merely a "moral fashion". I didn't know that conveying the barest level of respect toward your fellow man was a "moral fashion".

<comment><USER9> Conveying respect is not a fashion. The fashions are in who you're supposed to respect and how you're supposed to show it.

You can read more about this here:

[http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

<comment><USER11> How about respecting all people, if it's no trouble to you, in the way they want to be respected?

And by the way, wordsmith, it's "the fashions are in _whom_ you're supposed to respect."

<comment><USER9> I don't think you'd actually want to do that. There have been throughout history lots of people who on account of their birth or religion have wanted to be treated as superior to some other group. Would you just want to go along with that?

In fact it would be impossible to do what you suggest, because the ways in which people want to be respected could be (and often have been) incompatible. For example, what if two people with different religions both want to be treated as believers in the one true religion?

There are also plenty of individual cases we'd both find hard to swallow. Murderers who wanted to be regarded as upstanding people, and so on.

(And "who" in this case is much stronger. "Whom" introduces a jarringly pedantic note.)

<comment><USER11> Yes, all this is the reason I said "if it's no trouble to you." Certainly the desire for politeness can go too far, but avoiding a handful of loaded words is not very far. I don't think it's quite fair to compare a black man not wanting to be called boy with a murderer wanting to be called innocent.

<comment><USER9> It's no trouble to me to reinforce someone's mistaken feeling of superiority to someone else. The problem is for the someone else. So the threshold you propose is insufficient.

And I nowhere compared the two cases you mention. (That was an extreme case of putting words into one's mouth even for HN.) You're acting as if I said for ∀x-P(x) when in fact it's pretty clear I said -∀xP(x).

I'm done with this conversation, incidentally. I find that threads in which I have to say "no, what I said was" to this extent are always irrecoverable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, here's part of the problem: Sandy Hingston mentions some genuinely absurd overreactions (a student enraged when a grocery circular put an Black History Month banner next to an ad for chicken); and she also mentions Jennifer Livingston, who called bullshit on a guy who tried to guilt-trip her for _being fat in public_ ; and Hingston implies that _both of these are equally bad_.

This right here is half the problem. The reason we have people who are offended by everything is because of people who refuse to permit anyone to be offended by anything. Ms. Hingston, their bullshit is an overreaction to your bullshit. If you refuse to acknowledge any difference between oversensitive conniptions and calling out genuine assholes, you really have no business speaking on the subject.

<comment><USER13> Here is exactly how you deal with some guy writing in to tell you you're too fat: _delete the email and get on with your life_.

It's simple, it's easy, it solves the problem.

Of course it's not the modern solution of publicly bullying your correspondent into a retraction while claiming the moral high ground but it works and it's less unpleasant.

<comment><USER12> It is, of course, important to pick one's battles; but wherever possible, bullshit should be called out and dragged into the light, not quietly tolerated. Especially when, as in this case, it is widespread, entrenched, pernicious bullshit.

And you've got the "bullying" backwards. It wasn't Ms. Livingston doing it. You should know by now that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a comforting lie we tell to children.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thats a remarkably bad article, almost to the point of satire. It just sparkles some anecdotes over the fallacy that politeness is somehow impeding free speech. If you are offending someone, then you should apologize or the offended party has every justification to think of you as an asshole. The free speech issue is actually calling someone a asshole here. And if you can not express your opinion in a way that does not offend, chances are that you should reconsider your opinion. In the unlikely case that a opinion is both offensive and reasonable, you will have to live with people calling you insensitive.

Which brings me to this gem:

        Yes, of course there are students, and citizens, who
        have genuine grievances. But we no longer distinguish
        between them and those claiming harm where none exists.

Problem is, there is no objective scale to the subjective qualia of being offended. People have every right to be offended whenever they are.

[Edit: botched formatting.]

<comment><USER15> I thoroughly disagree.

The point is that we are seeing too much PC, and it is corrupting the nature of public debate. All comments become subjective to the audience, rather than subjective to the speaker. The examples cited by the author all are encompassed in the quote

" I think it's these very small things that reinforce cultural and racial stereotypes.. "

to which the author disagrees. You are correct, there is no appropriate scale to measure being offended, which is why unchecked (read: no scale to judge) PC results in kids being kicked out of school, a huge industry being built around PC counseling, etc. The author is not proposing removing PC altogether, just that it is being laughably abused to the detriment of everyone.

I'd be inclined to agree.

<comment><USER14>
        " I think it's these very small things that reinforce
         cultural and racial stereotypes.. "

I tend to agree with the quote. To use a analogy to programming languages, in Python one is always tempted to use lists, whether they are the appropriate data structure or not. And experience then comes in the form of many solutions using lists.

As for too much PC, I think the problems are rather created by lazy thinking instead of PC. So in a way there is a industry which exploits PC, but the solution is not less PC, the solution is more critical thinking. ( And bad articles really do not help with that.)

<comment><USER16> What if critical thinking comes up with the "wrong" answers? Most of the biggest thought criminals on the internet merely mention facts that exist for anyone to see. What if, after running lots of multiple regressions to get rid of confounding variables, distasteful conclusions persist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Political Correctness and being insulted are not the same.

The former is institutionalised politeness where we use less objectionable terms. We'll call black people blacks and not niggers or negroes, we'll call call inuit inuit and not eskimos, we'll call Native Americans Native Americans and not Red Indians, and so on.

But being offended is not about PC. Now, yes, PC terms ultimately derive from avoiding using derogatory phrases towards people. But someone suing someone else for being offended by their remark is not "Political Correctness gone mad", as the Daily Mail might say. It is likely just somebody's overreaction.

I think PC culture is a good thing. We take a tiny effort to use more neutral language and it makes a whole lot of difference for some groups of people.

<comment><USER18> Exactly. The right-wing's redefinition of PC, and subsequent use of such as an attack on anything it disagrees with is possibly the biggest strawman of our time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> All this weaponization of the words "political correctness" is quite obviously a nervous white phenomenon, a defense mechanism -- for example, do we talk about the banning of the ethnic studies program and Latino/Latina social studies books in Arizona as "political correctness gone awry"? [1] No, but that's obviously what it is: latin@ teachers exposing latin@ high school students to material [2] that offends white people. If anyone but white people are offended they're "just being PC"; if white people are offended, they get to be "victims of reverse racism"; same for gender of course.

As a colleague of mine put it: "Political correctness, as a concept, is a figment of right wingers, that usually accompanies ideas like agenda, or guilt. I think what we're referring to when speaking of sensitivity is something other than the typical "PC" concept. Inclusivity, and thoughtfulness are nearly unarguably good things.

I think most reactionaries, and lesser angry white guys typically dislike the increased sensitivity that goes along with this more inclusive attitude America has today. No one has a right not to be offended. No one should expect civil treatment 100% of the time; people aren't that thoughtful. Further, there's no responsibility to not harm or injure another's sense of well being through speech.

I'm free to be a racist ignoramus, and alienate anyone I choose to talk to in public, and it's a good thing. It's also a good thing that I will have to face consequences for socially unacceptable behavior. I'm mostly tired of trite apologies from people that lacked the backbone to stand behind their speech, for instance, Tracy Morgan, who repented quickly about his anti-gay stand up. I wish people had the foresight to realize the consequences, and if they decide to say something, they should have enough will to counter criticism as a valid personal opinion, which all types of heinous stuff are. It's heinousness is not the same as lacking in credibility, or serious intent."

FIRE is an explicitly right-wing org whose purpose is to deliberately conflate violation of free-speech rights (which only the government can do) with criticism and banning of certain kinds of speech by non-government people and institutions from their forums and spaces, when it is not illegal to do so. It's a bit like the ADF, whose purpose is to conflate criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism... it also reminds me of people who complain about CPS, but that's just me

[1] [http://saveethnicstudies.org/](http://saveethnicstudies.org/)

[2] [http://azethnicstudies.com/banned- books](http://azethnicstudies.com/banned-books)

<comment><USER19> Perhaps PC is really about finding offense when none is intended.

<comment><USER20> Intention isn't all that matters.

The point is to be thoughtful about what you say and if someone else says they are offended to actually listen and apologise. Basic empathy and all that.

It's all quite simple and not very hard to do.

<comment><USER21> I am offended by your implications. Please apologize now.

<comment><USER3> never seen this type of humor in this context before in my whole life

<comment><USER21> This is not humor. I am genuinely offended by socipathic implications claiming that somebody who does not follow PC lacks "basic empathy" (which is the PC code for "subhuman").

Of course, offending bigots and haters is fine from your point of view. If you had any empathy (not the "basic" kind ) you knew how do _we_ feel about this crap.

PS. I guess you down voted me to offend me? Tough cookies, I am actually not offended by that. "Basic empathy" though does indeed offend me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sadly I'm afraid of sharing this article.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh, god, how I hate political correctness! I can understand that people get upset and offended. They can boycott someone they don't like, but that PC bullshit infuriates me. It only makes communication difficult and people more manipulable.

Take terms like "imbecile", "Idiot" and "retarded". They were medical terms applied using more or less objective measurements. What happened then? They became un-PC and were replaced by "intellectual disability". How much time before the "dis-" is considered offensive? Maybe we should use sometime abstract like "green thinker" and "orange thinker"? But it doesn't matter what term we chose, it'll be associated to something negative and it'll become an insult _for the general population_.

Do you want to live in a world where you have to say that the umpire has "visual impediments" for fears to offend to blind people? No, "impediments" is too strong, maybe "visually challenged"? No, too negative. "Almost all the senses of the umpire are up to the level of a person of his age, with the possible exception of one that, although its absence doesn't demerit him at all as a human being, maybe would suggest that he'll be better in another line of work, like piano tuner."

<comment><USER24> > Take terms like "imbecile", "Idiot" and "retarded".

These words now have an everyday use. They are no longer used medically because medical science advances and we have much better understanding.

> They were medical terms applied using more or less objective measurements.

They were medical terms used to detain people in hospital, or to deny them medical treatment, or to keep them in prison, or to deny them rights to fair trial or to justice if they were abused or murdered.

> They became un-PC and were replaced by "intellectual disability".

No. They became outmoded and less useful because times change.

> Do you want to live in a world where you have to say that the umpire has > "visual impediments"

I don't want to live in a world where it's acceptable to kill someone who has a low IQ just because they have a low IQ. I don't want to live in a world where someone with a low IQ is denied medical treatment. I don't want to live in a world where someone with a low IQ is raped with no consequence. I don't want to live in a world of lazy stupid designers who can't make a website accessible to all. I don't want to live in a hateful, hurtful, world where ignorant bigots can spew their bile and get offended when people tells them they're being an arsehole.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure that we're participating in the same conversation. They were medical terms, yes. They have an every day use, yes (that was exactly my point). They became outmoded and less useful, yes. But, no, not everyone who has used or uses those words is a proponent of IQ-based euthanasia, rape, and segregation.

Any reasonable people will criticize someone who bullies others who are in a weaker position. It's the bullying what is to condemn, not their particular use of words.

<comment><USER24> > But, no, not everyone who has used or uses those words is a proponent of IQ- > based euthanasia, rape, and segregation.

But using those words leads to a culture where these things are more possible.

Ann calls Bob a retard.

i) Bob has a learning disability. Ann is either a bully, and should be condemned. Or Ann is using outmoded terminology, and she should appreciate the help she's given when people give her better information.

ii) Bob doesn't have a learning disability. Ann is a friend and they're having fun. What they do between themselves is up to them, but they're using hate speech casually, and they should at least consider the effect that use has on people who have learning disabilities.

iii) Bob doesn't have a learning disability. Ann isn't a friend, and she's using it as an insult. Ann needs to realise that her use of the term as an insult is contributing the continued abuse of people with learning disabilities. By using the word we diminish people with LD as less-than- people.

Part of the confusion is cultural difference. It's normal use in US to say "That's retarded!" and it's not at all offensive to most people. But it's really offensive to people from other countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Before engaging in any discussion of this genre, I encourage people to take some IATs, if only to have some quantifiable introspection going in.

[https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html)</comment>


AI Thinks Rachel Maddow Is a Man (and this is a problem for all of us) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@edwin/ai-thinks-rachel-maddow-is-a-man-and-this-is-a-problem-for-all-of-us-921e45523d6e <comment><USER2> nobody think "AI" thinks "rachel maddow is a man" except for people who don't get AI - which is amusing given the authors attempt at being authoritative in the field. There's a reason this didn't get a bunch of upvotes.

Really, just lazy article writing. Come back with some meaningful insights or research. If the author wishes to play on people's ignorance of AI, HN is not the place to do it.</comment>


Qlik acquired by Thoma Bravo for $3B - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160602005740/en/Qlik-Announces-Agreement-Acquired-Thoma-Bravo-30.50 <comment><AUTHOR> I've been following Qlik and their competition with Tableau for quite a while. Qlik is a bigger and older company than Tableau. It's more focused on the technical side of data analysis rather than on UI/UX (Tableau does the opposite). They reached the point where their old product (QlikView) has accumulated too much technical debt so they don't develop it actively anymore. But their new product (Qlik Sense) is not ready for prime time yet (again because of shortcomings in UI/UX), even though it's very ambitious as it's basically a development platform (think Meteor for analytical apps). It seems like going private would give the company management more freedom to make bold decisions. Staying public meant having extra pressure from public investors which are typically short-term-minded. All in all it's probably a good move for Qlik.

<comment><USER2> About three years ago, I was at a place that used Qlikview, and it was the worst software I've ever used in my life. It's technically able to handle larger datasets than Excel, but it's much slower than Excel at any kind of analysis or aggregation, it doesn't make use of SQL (even though the data it handles is tabular...instead, it uses a home-brewed, mangled, and inferior query language), and its visualizations and UI are sub-par compared to Tableau.

Good riddance.

<comment><USER3> As the parent comment mentions, QlikView is now the previous generation product, and Qlik Sense is where they are moving towards.

Qlik Sense is pretty snappy, has much improved UX, etc.

Qlik are top-right quadrant for BI tools, on a par with Tableau.

<comment><USER4> Is it really though? I tried to find more info on Qliksense and perhaps I'm not looking hard enough, but I can't see a decent rundown of why it is superior.

<comment><AUTHOR> Qlik Sense is about 10% faster than QlikView 11, although QlikView 12 got the same engine as Qlik Sense so they're on par now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting on a lot of levels. One is that they quote it as being a 40% premium to when a hedge fund bought a stake supporting a sale, but only a few percent above today's close. This suggests that the market was betting on a sale at around this place. (Compare to Marketo, which sold at well above the market value)

Another interesting piece is that Qlik had a massive drop (~30%) in Q1 revenues versus Q4. [0] Enterprise software sales is seasonal, but this was pretty extreme.

Another interesting piece is their SG&A is very close to their revenue, and dwarfs R&D. This suggests that Sales and Support is what's going to get the big axe.

[0] [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=IdVQV_naKMqxiwKiyby4CA)

<comment><USER6> As far as the "40% premium" goes:

> This price represents a premium of 40% to the Company's unaffected 10 day > average stock price prior to March 3, 2016 of $21.83

Basically they took at 10-day average around a (somewhat) arbitrary date to price the stock for that 40% number. "Somewhat" because that date was when Eliott Management, an activist investor fund, bought a giant chunk of Qlik. That signaled a likely upcoming acquisition (which, as you said, the market was betting on). Thoma probably argues that signal moved the stock above it's "true" price.

The counterargument would be a defense of the efficient markets hypothesis: that the true price isn't about signals and technicals, it's just what someone is willing to pay.

<comment><USER5> I would think that Elliott's acquisition was that an acquisition might happen - what surprised me was that the price barely moved after that. Usually there's some kind of bidding war at the end. Or a chance that the acquisition falls through for a while. (Look at how long it took for Yahoo to finally get moving that way) It's rare that the early information hits a bullseye 3 months later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am unaware about the current situation, but two years back qlick related jobs used to be a high paying and in-demand.

<comment><USER4> They still are!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm hearing both names for the first time, which is quite surprising in the context of a $3B acquisition.

<comment><USER9> Is it really? The world is a big place with very many multibillion dollar companies. I'd be surprised if most people could name more than 10% of them.

<comment><USER10> Naming and hearing of are very different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is this, and why is this on the front page of HN? Are either Qlik or Thoma Bravo companies that I should know about?

<comment> cthulhu-bot Thoma Bravo is and let me tell you why.

The last company I worked at went through an acquisition with Thoma Bravo and the very next day after acquisition was confirmed we walked into the office and there were security guards in suits with ear pieces patrolling the office. At 9am they locked half of us in conference rooms and told us that everyone who wasn't in a conference room was getting laid off. We weren't allowed to leave the conference rooms for an hour out of "respect" for everyone gathering their stuff into boxes and they said that the security was there for "our safety". Thoma Bravo is currently bleeding that company dry and running it on a skeleton crew while it slowly circles the drain.

This experience has made me super wary of private equity firms in general but this company in particular.

<comment><USER12> I guess Compuware, Detroit / Dynatrace.

Or Riverbed.

Having several similar products ... you know what it means: [https://thomabravo.com/portfolio/all/current/](https://thomabravo.com/portfolio/all/current/)

<comment> cthulhu-bot Several similar products indeed. Since I was at none of the above it seems they have a track record now and people should know what to expect.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Library for processing binary data from Javascript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kzar/bitratchet-js

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to see an example of the library in use I've made a simple BMP parser here [http://plnkr.co/edit/y1Re1GCby0fVN4gkHaQo?p=info](http://plnkr.co/edit/y1Re1GCby0fVN4gkHaQo?p=info) . It doesn't really demonstrate the full power of the library but I hope it gives a feel for how to use it.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have a "favorite" entrepreneur? Who? - <AUTHOR>

I've recently become a fan of Dov Charney, the CEO of American Apparel. Do you guys have a favorite? If so, who are they & why? <comment><USER2> I love Larry and Sergei for being able to deliver on Netscape's dream of making the web the platform, and the OS irrelevant.

I also like 280North for creating an open platform that allows control- centric, rather than document centric, layouts for web apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like Sam Walton because he increased the spending power of a lot of Americans by making retail more efficient. I like that he aligned his business with his customers' interest. His business did well in proportion as it made his customers' better off.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mark Cuban. Grew up in my area, started a cool website in the 90's, got paid way too much for it, and then was smart enough to get his money out of that sector and buy a basketball team.... because he thought it would be fun and he could do it better.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most Admired: Bill Gates - he's the only one I can think of who's truly top- notch from both a technical and a business standpoint

Who I wish I were: Steve Chen and Chad Hurley - they went from idea to $1.65 billion in a year-and-a-half</comment>


Ask HN: My new job isn't working out (UK) - <AUTHOR>

Sorry it's a bit of a cliche but despite doing this for over a decade it's the first time it happened to me. I'm an embedded developer and I've been at my new job for 3 months now and it's just not working out. The work turned out to be closer to business software development than embedded (which is what it was described as during interviews, they even tested by assembler). I don't think I'm a good fit and I'm pretty sure they realize it.
What do I do?
My CV up to that point is pretty straightforward with a good few years at every company with a perfectly amicable separations upon which I received good recs. What happens if I quit or they fire me? How do I explain this on my CV? I can't believe I'm a grown man asking these kind of questions but I hope someone with a similar experience can maybe share some advice. <comment><USER2> "We mutually agreed the position was not a great fit for me."

ie the truth. This happens _all the time_ and anyone who has done any hiring has encountered great employees with this sort of work experience. In fact, most experienced devs have either made the same decision themselves or wished they had.

Leaving a job is not the end of the world for either party, don't over think it.

If it becomes a habit that is when red flags happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would recommend applying for other jobs that fit your skill set, go to a couple of interviews. After you have gone to a couple of interviews do a comparison of the pros and cons of each job to see which one benefits you the best in the short and long term in terms of financially, learning potential, growth potential, commute time, investment opportunities, team work and anything else that you believe is important.

In the interviews ask to speak with other people on the team so you can make sure you will actually be doing embedded software development and not just a manager or someone that does not do the work. As a manager may not always know what is truly involved in the job asking the people doing the work normally yields more information for you to work with.

In terms of how to explain this on your CV, you do not do this on your resume, but do this in interviews. Normally you just tell the truth by saying the work being done did was more business software development than embedded software development.

Don't be afraid to give your notice after you have accepted a job that is more in line with what you want to do. Just make sure you stay professional so you do not burn any bridges.

</comment><comment><USER4> > How do I explain this on my CV?

Years from now a 3 month stint will be of little or no consequence. You may opt to delete the experience all togther.

Relative to your current job search and next interviews-- describe it as a learning experience, nothing ventured-nothing gained.

Areas to consider-- what would you have done differently to insure a good match? How could you could probe deeper? Meet with potential collegues and counter-parts? Spend an entire day observing the office?</comment>